suspicious minds
by Medie
Summary: Kate was different. AU


title: suspicious minds  
author: m  
characters: william boone, augur, kate boone (mentioned)  
prompt: 021 friends  
rating: pg  
author's note: haven't even thought about writing this fandom in years but, I pulled out a tape today and just...got in the zone. the story references events from the EFC novel "Reqiuem For Boone" which, by the way, is a very good read and fans of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda will grin at the fact that the actress who played Kate played Beka Valentine on that show as well. Can't quite buy the happy housewife anymore after seeing her play Beka. which may be where this comes from.

"suspicious minds"  
by m.  
-------  
Kate was different.

She'd changed the day the Companions had walked into her life. At the time, he'd thought it for the better. Working as a personal attache to a Taelon diplomat - Da'an - she'd found a purpose to drive her naturally curious intellect. Kate had always been a brilliant, active woman. After his discharge from the military, their marriage had arrived at a crossroads. It had ended for him with the move to Denver and his joining the police force. For Kate...Kate had found the Companions.

She'd loved the work. They sent a pilot and a shuttle for her daily and the commute was next to nothing thanks to the Taelons tech. The work had been a challenge, interfacing Taelon and human systems, coaxing them into playing nice with each other. It was just the kind of challenge Kate thrived on. Every day brought fresh stories of Da'an, the absentminded alien, and all the shenanigans 'she' was inadvertently prone to creating around her. Kate's eyes had lit up with the telling and they'd both enjoyed the fruits of her work.

Then, out of nowhere, the stories had ceased, the excitement had waned, and the light vanished from her eyes. She was different overnight. At first, he chalked it up to the extra stress she'd mentioned at work. Before the silence, she'd talked about a big project and he'd assumed that was precisely where her energies were being focused. For a while, with that in mind, he let things lie. But then time passed, nothing changed, he started to worry. Then he got scared. After the anger had passed, he got good and mad and when William Boone worked up a good mad, things got complicated. Someone had hurt his wife and no one got to do that.

He might have left the military behind but Will wasn't a man without resources and he had every intention of using every one he had to find out who was haunting Kate.

The first, and best, option was always the same.

"So, someone is causing the Lady Caitlin grief you say?" Upon hearing Will's suspicions, Augur looked disgusted by it. "To treat a woman of such singular gifts in so debase a fashion..." He tsked and went to his console. "Shame...what has this world come to?"

Will felt a faint hint of amusement at the other man's theatrics. The first he'd felt since the whole thing had started. Augur had always had a bit of a crush on Kate. Going back to their rather unorthodox first meeting. If he'd been a less-confident man, he might have worried about their unique friendship. When Kate and Augur got to talking Geekspeak he inevitably stood there looking blank.

That friendship was one of the best chances Kate had.

"My first thought was the Companions..." He admitted guiltily. No one would even think of saying something like that about humanity's sainted alien friends. 

Well, no one save himself, or Augur apparently.

"Hmmmmm...it is likely but, I doubt that our alien benefactors are entirely to blame." Augur demurred with the air of a man who held the secrets of the world cupped in his hands. "The word among my sources is that they are indeed not the saints and angels they, and their champions, would have us to believe they are. But," he slanted a wicked grin Boone's way, "the same can be said of us. Give me a day, I'll have you your answers."

"A day?" Will prompted, unable to resist taking a jab at Augur's ego. "For you that's a while...I was expecting an hour tops."

The infamous hacker smiled archly, affecting the theatrical flair that was his stock and trade. "There are certain...cautions which need to be taken." He turned back to the computer, commands flying from his fingers, sending questing tendrils out into the farthest reaches of cyberspace, searching out God knew what. "Things are rarely so simple and easy as I, in my infinite talents, may make them appear. We don't want to alert someone to the fact you're suspicious now do we?" He arched a brow, knowing it was reflected in the glossy screen of his monitors.

"No," he agreed, thinking of his wife's face and the look he'd been seeing in her eyes, "we don't want to do that." When he went after those men...he didn't want them to see it coming. At least, not at first.

finis?


End file.
